Burn After Reading
BY Ryan LaMarca / 2009-03-03
When I say that "Burn After Reading" was the funniest movie of 2008, I am being wholeheartedly sincere. The movie, which comes from Joel and Ethan Coen, directors of Best Picture winner "No Country for Old Men," is an absolute riot. A hoot, even. It's going to be hard to explain myself in some parts of this article, but I found myself laughing out loud and rolling on the floor at the comedy antics in "Burn After Reading." It was simply fantastic and one of the best experiences I've had at the movies in a long time.
If someone were to ask you to describe the plot of "Burn After Reading" to them, they would either think it was the stupidest movie they've ever heard of or that you're a complete idiot for not being able to explain the movie swiftly and smoothly. It's really that complicated, but it's humorous in that regard, too. The movie's plot is so dumb, but that's also what's so charming about it. Something about "Burn After Reading" just spoke to me so strongly that I just fell in love with it.
Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) are employees at the local Hard Bodies gym in Washington, D.C. When the janitor finds a CD on the floor of the bathroom, Chad discovers strange and unusual files, files that look like confidential CIA documents. Little do he and Linda realize that the files on the CD really belong to the recently terminated CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) who is writing his memoirs. Hoping to cash in on their find, the two gym workers try to blackmail Cox so Linda can pay for expensive cosmetic surgery. But it doesn't end there. Meanwhile, Linda meets up with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who is already cheating on his wife with Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton), Osborne's wife, and begins to have a relationship with him, complicating things further.
Near the end of the film, one of the outsider characters attempts to explain what had just happened over the course of the film to another character. Neither of them understands what really happened, and they even acknowledge that nothing made much sense at all and that it doesn't really matter. One of them does remark however, "They seem to be all sleeping with each other." That's one way to sum everything up in the movie.
The heart of "Burn After Reading" is its wonderful characters, all of whom think that they're important people in the world. At its core, the movie is about people who think they're important and go about their lives without realizing just how insignificant they are. It's also about idiots. These people are all morons, and watching them with their buffoonish antics is pure comedy gold. But the talent in "Burn After Reading" is simply bursting at the seams with the likes of George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, and Tilda Swinton, to name a few.
George Clooney plays Harry Pfarrer, an agent for the Treasury Department, who is constantly paranoid. He always acts like he has something to hide and plays things out as if the entire world revolves around him, when clearly nothing does. Clooney gives a great performance as this overly suspicious womanizer. It's interesting to watch him play out the role. The character is clearly a pompous fool, a likable one at that, and it's so funny to see him constantly assert his crazy thoughts and ideas.
Not everyone's a complete dolt in "Burn After Reading," however. Tilda Swinton's character of Mrs. Cox is a conniving and scheming woman who's on the verge of divorcing her husband. She's not like the rest of the characters in that she actually knows how to keep a steady head, but it's very awkward to see her do her job, as she has to be the worst person on Earth to be a pediatrician, because she's so ice cold. And does she hate her husband. She belittles him something terrible, and that's just enough to drive Osborne Cox to the point of madness, but it's all for our amusement.
But it is truly Frances McDormand's character of Linda Litzke who steals the show. Even the name Linda Litzke has something about it that makes you want to chuckle. She's a simple gym employee who's looking for love on the Internet and feels that she's just about gone as far as she can with her current body. Linda decides she needs plastic surgery. Well, it's a bit complicated as it involves several different procedures that all add up to a lot of money, and she's desperate. And you'll witness the progression of Linda's madness throughout "Burn After Reading." Add to that her great chemistry with Brad Pitt, and the movie's a perfect lock. It's in the way everything is played out that makes "Burn After Reading" such an infectiously risible experience.
I can say that the plot at large makes relatively no sense, but the truth of the situation is that it doesn't matter. When a movie is this outrageously funny, I can cut it some slack in that department. Maybe it was even purposely designed to be that way, but I don't really know. However, with its nonsensical plot that just keeps going and going, "Burn After Reading" never lets up with hysterical antics and laughs that last long after the movie's over. This is one you truly need to see.
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